above the law

The “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Prospects for Liberty

by on August 19, 2010 @ 5:41 pm · 12 comments

in Immigration, Vulgar Politics, War

The furor over the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero) doesn’t make me very optimistic about the prospects for liberty.

As a libertarian and just a live-and-let-live kind of guy, I can’t imagine caring much about, let alone vocally protesting, what someone is building two blocks away from me.

Yet apparently many of my fellow Americans are such busybodies that they’ll whine for weeks about something being built hundreds or thousands of miles away from them, in a city where they don’t live and probably won’t even visit. And many of the complainers are among the Tea Party set whom we are occasionally told are “libertarian,” even though they seem to hate Muslims and Mexicans and love war at least as much as they hate the federal government and love liberty.

Jonah Goldberg claims that the conservatives who object “mostly” recognize that the Muslims have a legal right to build their center. But what I hear on talk radio makes me doubt this. A common argument there seems to be that since “liberals” don’t care about the constitution or property rights in general, they aren’t entitled to invoke them now — as though liberals somehow have the power to waive Muslims’ rights.

In any event, even if Goldberg is correct, it’s hard to imagine that the spirit of liberty resides in the sort of people who get so worked up over this sort of thing. The ease with which they’ve been distracted by this issue suggests that reducing government isn’t going to be their top priority once their team is back in control in Washington.

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

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Congressman Assaults Student on Washington Sidewalk

by on June 14, 2010 @ 3:23 pm · 4 comments

in Police Statism, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics

Apropos Jacob Huebert’s excellent post a few days ago on the time Before We Worshipped Presidents, our lesser rulers are getting increasingly used to their special, above-the-law status as well. Watch how Democratic Congressman Bob Etheridge responds to being peacefully asked a simple question by a well-dressed student on a public street:

Congressman Etheridge thinks he can interrogate and assault someone simply for having the temerity to ask him a question in public, apparently without fear of retaliation or legal consequences, despite being recorded. He has a right to know who the student is? I don’t think so. He’s not police. I don’t think even a police officer would have cause under positive law to demand identification and assault the student simply for video recording and asking a question in public. In any case, their authority is illegitimate and what we have here clearly is assault even under current positive law.

What’s more disturbing is that this incident is indicative of just how much our petty tyrants view themselves as being above us and the law — though I suppose assaulting one person on the street is an improvement over assaulting millions through his legislative acts; if only he and his fellow control-freaks would cease the latter, the world would be a much better place and their private crime manageable.

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